September 16, 2012

Week of Gaming #102 - 9/16/12

My Xbox is still attached to my PC monitor, which has re-enabled console gaming for me after a modest dry spell. Unfortunately mo work load has been relatively high this week, so it hasn't seen the time investment I would prefer.

Games of note this week:

1 - Transformers: Fall of Cybertron

2 - Dungeons of Dredmor

3 - Marvel Vs. Capcom 2

4 - Slydris

5 - .Slide

.Slide

This little puzzle gem was something I found via reddit - the author was looking for feedback on his first published game, so I checked it out. For a first effort it has a really clean visual aesthetic, and the puzzles are decent. There isn't a lot of replay opportunity, but the potential for expansion is present, so we'll see if anything more comes of the game.

Slydris

An unexpected find when I was looking for .Slide (and didn't type in the leading period). This is a fresh, exciting take on Tetris-style line clearing. No, really. It has great achievements, a few nice game modes, and just the right number of special elements (blocks you can't slide, magnets). I think hard-core action puzzle fans will love chewing through this one - and anyone will at least enjoy playing it. It has a very "Lumens" style to the gameplay, especially the survival mode. I always appreciate a game that helps organize my thinking into new patterns, and Slydris absolutely delivers on that.

Marvel vs Capcom 2

There is a new arcade in town, which offers free to play games and monthly membership rates. The have a dedicated Marvel vs Capcom 2 machine - so I've been making a point of stopping through once a week or so to play. It's taken a few sessions for the old reflexes to come back, but now I'm crushing the story mode in about 20 minutes. This is the real arcade machine - so the game needs to be played and finished a few hundred times for all the characters and options to unlock. I'm very much enjoying my role in that process! I was disappointed that UMvC3 didn't have any sort of unlock progression, though at the same time I appreciated it.

Dungeons of Dredmor

After months of planning (and a little lucky help from my son) I finally got one of the most elusive achievements in DoD - the "Double Rainbow" which requires that you hit a monster with 14 damage types simultaneously! The most challenging types to locate are Existential and Asphyxiative damage, two words which have now entered my 9-year-olds lexicon. (Video games are educational!) I have more achievements to earn still, but most of them have straight-forward requirements.

Transformers: Fall of Cybertron

My Monday-night co-op group played through all of Transformers: War for Cybertron, and we had a blast doing it. So it was a natural fit for us to check out the sequel. The gameplay in FoC is nicely refined and improved overall - the story is still excellent, the fan-service is lavish, but neither gets in the way of the action. Unfortunately there is no co-op story this time around. :(

I totally understand why - a co-op story requires that you have 3 or 4 allied characters battling through the story at all time - which means any given player could be missing a lot, and your success or failure will often hinge on things you don't even see. Without those constraints, the developers can deliver a much more personal action story - covering many more characters. So I think it was a good decision, and improves the single-player game.

But will I take the time to play through the single-player game? ... I might skip it.

Comments

I haven’t played these games yet because, just like you, my workload just keeps on piling up. I can’t seem to get away from it! What’s your monitor’s screen resolution? I have a 1440 x 900 resolution hooked up to my GTS 450 (PC). It’s not a powerful rig, but it’s enough for me. I also have a PS3, but it isn’t connected to anything as of now.